10 days

Alright, so on Saturday, with only 10 days left in France, I went to Versailles with my friends Toni and Rebecca. I had been to Versailles twice before--once when I was 14, and once in January. In the winter, there was a wonderful exhibition on Louis XIV, but the trade-off was that we couldn't appreciate the beautiful gardens. This time around, we made full use of the grounds. First of all, there was a lovely manmade pond where we rented a boat and rowed around. Here is the view above it all:

Here are some pictures from us boating:




There was also a labyrinthine maze of tall, tall shrubbery, very à la Triwizard Tournament. I kept expecting a dragon to jump out at us at any time. Instead, we kept happening upon beautiful fountains!

Eventually, we took a wrong turn and ended up in a dramatic, peaceful grove full of elm trees! We decided to sit down and rest there for awhile (which ended up turning into a nap).



We even made our way over to the "Queen's Hamlet," aka the little country house where Marie Antoinette would go when she wanted to "get away from it all." But alas, it was 6:00pm, and the house was closed. Overall, an amazing, summery day, though, even down to the trip home: turns out our RER train was canceled, so we stayed in town and had a classy dinner, then ended up accidentally taking a train home that took only 10 minutes!! (The way out took about 40.) Anyways, with only 10 days left, I consider this a day well spent.